Quick Tips for Adding Video and Sound to PowerPoint

In PowerPoint 2013, you can enliven your slides by adding movement and sound to them. You can set up different transition effects for moving from one slide to another, and you can animate the individual objects on a slide so that they enter or exit the slide or emphasize a certain point.

Here are some quick tips for livening up your PowerPoint presentation:

Transitions are movements from one slide to another. You can set up transitions on the Transitions tab.

To control the speed of a transition, set its duration. To automatically allow a transition to occur without a mouse click, set the After value to a number of seconds.

By clicking Transitions and then Effect Options, you can specify a direction or other options for a transition effect.

An entrance animation controls how and when an object enters the slide. If an object isn’t animated, it enters at the same time as the slide’s background.

An emphasis animation calls attention to an object that is neither entering nor exiting. A motion path animation does the same thing, but it moves the object along a prescribed path.

An exit animation controls how and when an object exits the slide. If an object has no exit animation, it exits when you transition to the next slide.

Using the Animation Pane, you can sequence and fine-tune multiple animations on a slide.

Using the Animation Painter, you can copy animation effects between objects.

To insert a sound clip on a slide, choose Insert→Audio.

To insert a video clip, use the Insert Video content placeholder icon or choose Insert→Video.

After inserting a video clip, you can use the Video Tools Format tab’s commands to control the appearance of the video clip frame. Use the Video Tools Playback tab’s commands to control the clip’s playback.

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